Bengaluru airport to use Aadhaar for biometric entry
Published on 02 Nov, 2016
Bangalore International Airport is preparing to introduce biometric screening at entry for holders of India’s digital identity numbers
Have an Aadhaar card? Jump the queues at the airport.
Bangalore
International Airport is preparing to introduce biometric screening at
entry for holders of India’s digital identity numbers, the first step in
adding a layer of security and efficiency at one of the country’s
busiest airports.
“The process of manual verification of identity
is a security concern and a pain point for the consumer. We want to
digitize and automate the process to make the entire experience
memorable and hassle-free,” said Hari Marar, President, Airport
Operations, BIAL, the operator of Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International
Airport. “The process should be as simple as waving my hand to get entry
into the airport.”
Bengaluru airport is currently testing the
feasibility of the concept with technology vendors Morpho of France and
Vision Box of Portugal. Hyderabad airport implemented biometric
screening last year and, according to some biometric industry reports,
the Mumbai and Delhi airports, too, are set to introduce e-boarding.
Given
the heightened global threat to high-profile places such as airports,
biometric screening is expected to provide benefits beyond mere
passenger convenience and reduction in security personnel. A few foreign
airports, including some in the United States, have begun implementing
biometric screening of passengers.
“Biometrics-based airport
entry is important considering India is witnessing air traffic growth in
excess of 21%. Moreover, it will reduce the time taken by a guard in
scrutinizing tickets and identity cards,” said Amber Dubey, partner and
India head for aerospace and defence at consultancy firm KPMG.
Bengaluru
airport handled nearly 10.5 million passengers in the first half of
this year, the third-busiest by passenger traffic behind the Delhi and
Mumbai airports.
More than 1 billion people in India have been
issued Aadhaar cards, for which facial, iris and fingerprint data are
recorded into a national digital registry. The biometric data and
digital identification numbers have been put to a number of uses,
including for identity verification in issuing passports and direct
transfer of cash subsidies under various welfare schemes.
But for
Bengaluru airport’s initiative to have any security impact, several
legal and procedural challenges have to be overcome, said Dubey.
For
one, Aadhaar cards are not mandatory and hundreds of thousands of
passengers—both Indian citizens and foreigners—are unlikely to be
registered with it. Also, Bengaluru airport’s biometric scanning system
would have to be linked both to the Aadhaar database as well as to the
National Crime Records Bureau’s database to flag any person on the
no-fly list.
Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport last
year introduced an end-to-end e-boarding initiative based on biometric
screening. It “uses Aadhaar card data to verify identity and data from
the airline departure control system to ensure that a person entering
the airport is a bona fide passenger,” said Kannan Sivasubramanian,
executive vice president at research firm Aranca.
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